Some states have a life expectancy in line with what traditionally would be called 3rd world countries, even before COVID.
(Nevermind that COVID was a worldwide event, not invalidating comparing stuff to other regions in any meaningful way)
ISTM that those goalposts have shifted somewhat. I don’t think anybody disputes your point that non-retired elderly lawyers are significantly more common than non-retired elderly construction workers, but that wasn’t the distinction you originally appeared to be making when you described the former as “very possible” and the latter as “unlikely”.
Anyway, from this source:
If over one-fifth of the construction-worker workforce is north of 55, then ISTM that having a significant number of 70-year-old construction workers is not at all “unlikely”. The average retirement age for a construction worker is apparently 61, which also makes it seem likely that a non-negligible number make it to 70.
(Furthermore, I think you’re being too sweeping in your inference that only inspector/manager/foreman/self-employed positions can exempt an older construction worker from the most physically demanding toil. Some equipment operators, for example, are doing their lifting almost exclusively with machines. Consider the growing number of women in blue-collar jobs in construction trades and ask yourself, is there a sudden influx of women who are as big and strong as the average 40-year-old male construction worker, or are there ways to do a lot of construction jobs that don’t require being as big and strong as a 40-year-old male construction worker?)
This isn’t rocket science. It isn’t even science.
- Universal health care. Women’s health, maternal health, children’s health.
- Wealth re-distribution such that the bulk doesn’t go to the ultra-rich.
- Mass creation of secure well-paid jobs that do not require a college degree.
Do that and get back to me if life expectancy doesn’t rise to match other high GDP countries.
Well, it was clearly disputed.
But if it was, as you posit, a pedantic point about the existence of them at all, that’s a rather irrelevant datum to rebut the idea that the generally healthier lifestyles associated with higher incomes also has roots in income inequality
If we are going to be pedantic, I never stated ‘exempt’
But also, from your own cite:
The thesis of the article you cited is not that older workers are staying in the industry longer - it’s that in the last few years, younger workers left in greater numbers (thus driving up the % of older workers) and this will cause issues as the industry faces challenges in finding sufficient numbers of younger replacement workers.
I’m not sure how that helps the case that income inequality is less correlated with factors driving healthy lifestyles than I suggested.
Also, they outright state in the article that the industry needs to find a way to attract younger workers and that the older workers aren’t primarily the ones in low level positions but tilted to ones in more managerial/professional roles
I don’t doubt that race plays a role. But it’s more than that. The 2nd lowest life expectancy after Mississippi is West Virginia, which is one of the whitest states in the country. States like Oklahoma don’t do very well either, and it has a low % of black population (more Native American population & white).
Gun deaths & accidents move the number some, too. This usually happens at younger ages, which can really move the needle on average lifespan.
It’s a fascinating topic when you consider that the “richest” country in the world is killing its citizens earlier than other economically similar countries. There’s so much we get wrong in America, it’s mind-boggling.
I don’t know any country where this was a reality these days (or the past couple decades +), or a realistic future goal, at that.
Well, much like eliminating fossil fuel burning, it may not be a “realistic future goal” but that doesn’t keep it from being an imperative. The capitalist triumph of widespread unstable employment and under-employment, particularly of the less educated, in this country, is one main cause of the embrace of our drift toward fascism, as well as a main cause of worsening health outcomes.
In every Western country, I might add.
Is this true? My understanding is that some Western European countries (Germany and Denmark are the ones I’ve heard about) have much more robust worker protections and union membership. Germany has two educational tracks, one for the university-bound, and one more vocationally oriented. I think you may be wrong, but I don’t have cites on hand.
None to anything like the degree in the US, though.
Other developed countries don’t have poor people [that they don’t give two shits about].
Jesus wept.
While meanwhile Jeebus applauded and told all the folks at the nearby prosperity church’s 5,000-strong congregation that they were his anointed Winners!!1!.
Nobody is a loser with Jeebus on their side. Don’t forget to pay at the door.
Nope, you need to fix your roads, cars and driver education && do something about guns.
Nothing will fuck up avg. life expectancy like killing kids. Allowing geriatrics to live longer won’t move the needle.
Oh, yeah, guns. What do you suggest?
Don’t care, not my problem. Just pointing out they are the leading cause of death for US kids and therefore impacting life expectancy more than health care for the elderly.
UHC is not about the elderly in the USA. They already have UHC-lite called Medicare. It’s far from perfect, but it covers everybody who’s old.
UHC in the USA is about covering kids and expectant mothers and low-wage or part time workers as well as we already cover elderly and have for 60 years now. Lots of early mortality comes from teh lack of coverage for those demographics.
You’re surely right that guns kill a bunch of kids. As do car crashes.
On a per death basis yes. But life expectancy is also like that old used car dealership, volume volume, volume. So many more earlier deaths occur in adults than in kids that the fewer years per death are more than offset by the huge numbers.
The NYT had an analysis too.
I’m part of our profit driven health care system, and there is little doubt that it is culpable to our poor outcomes at all age groups. Note that the expensive care some get is not always better care; sometimes the opposite. And our health care system also was culpable in the opioid crisis. Our nutritional patterns and exercise patterns are horrible. Gun availability amplifies suicide completion rates and homicides. Structural factors have racist and classist impacts, again with our country’s vast wealth inequality having impact too.
But not many easy fixes there.
Everybody dies but once. Your individual contribution to the statistic is a function of how far away from the average you are. So shooting 20 kids in a classroom has a much bigger impact on life expectancy statistics that shooting twenty geriatrics in a care home would have.
It’s worth pointing out that your life expectancy is a function of how far you have already made it. The “headline” figure usually quoted is life expectancy at birth. But if you make it to, say 35, you’re no longer subject to the relatively high risk of death due to drugs/accident/driving/other stupidities that attends adolescence and young adulthood so, statistically, your expected age of death is now noticeably higher than it was at birth. But something like Covid, which affects the elderly much more severely than the young, will bring it down.
Each year a certain number of people die. Most of them are older. Shortening (making up numbers here) ten thousand lives from 80 to 78, say, is of more impact to average life expectancy than a hundred children dying in infancy.
A rather remarkable map:
That’s a twenty year gap between the best and worst counties.
The explanation for the five worst:
Diving deeper into the bottom five worst counties for life expectancy yields some interest results. Four of these five counties all have Native American populations higher than 80%. The remaining county, Union in Florida, is not majority Native American, but instead is home to the state’s largest prison population. On average, none of the 31,000 people in these five counties will live past the age of 70.